A new poll shows one in three Californians is unconvinced that President Barack Obama was born in the United States, and thus is ineligible to be president, including one in 25 among those who identify themselves as “liberal” in the generally left-leaning state.

The poll was done by Field Research Corp. by telephone Jan. 5-17 and questioned a total of 1,232 registered voters in the state. It included six languages – English, Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Korean and Vietnamese – based on the preference of the voter.

The survey report authored by Mark DiCamillo and Mervin Fields said there has been “conjecture in the media that Barack Obama was not actually born in the United States, and thus constitutionally is not eligible to be president.”

“Those advancing the claim are referred to in the press as ‘birthers.’ One theory is that Obama was born in Hawaii before it became a U.S. state in 1959. Others claim he was born in Kenya where his father was born and resided for most of his life. This runs contrary to published records, vouched for by various Hawaiian state officials, showing that Obama was born on August 4, 1961, in Hawaii,” the poll report said.

The results reveal that “two-thirds of voters here (67 percent) say they believe that Obama was born in the U.S. However, 11 percent think that he was not and another 22 percent say they aren’t sure.”

The results immediately were dissed by local media. The Sacramento Bee’s report said, “Doubts about whether Obama was born outside U.S. soil, and thus constitutionally ineligible to be president, arose during the 2008 campaign, and have been propagated since then by a ‘birther movement.’”

The report continued, “More than a dozen unsuccessful lawsuits have been filed challenging Obama’s assertion – backed by a birth certificate and other evidence – that he was born in Hawaii.”

However, Obama’s “birth certificate” remains concealed. It’s only a digital image of a “certification of live birth” that has been posted online, and as WND has reported, such procedures open wide the door to fraud.

“It’s entirely possible that these [vital records] systems could be altered by someone who wishes to do so,” said Prof. Eugene H. Spafford, executive director for the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security.

The newspaper cited nothing to support its assertion there is “other evidence” to substantiate Obama’s claim he was born in Hawaii.

Field Poll results for Californians who believe President Obama was born in the U.S.

The poll shows 6 percent of Democrats believe he was not born in the U.S. and another 9 percent are unsure. For Republicans those figures rocket to 20 percent and 38 percent. For “non-partisans” it still includes 5 percent who believe he was not born in the U.S. and 24 percent who are unsure.

The poll also revealed that 61 percent of the state’s voters know about the tea party movement, which challenges the massive government growth and spending programs being developed in Washington now, and 28 percent say they identify with it.

The poll did link the two issues, finding that those who identify strongly with tea party goals are not sure about the president’s birth story.

“It’s an interesting phenomenon that they are not only rebelling against the growth and size of government, but they are actually questioning the authority of the president,” DiCamillo told the Bee.

He also warned the association to the tea party protests could indicate the impact of the movement.

“The idea is we can come back and revisit this as we get closer to the fall elections to see if more people are identifying with this,” he told the newspaper. “In an early measure like this, you get a picture of its origin. If it grows, we can see where it has broadened in its appeal.”

WND has reported multiple times on lawsuits that have been filed alleging Obama was born in Africa, rather than Hawaii, as Obama insists. Others have been filed claiming that Obama’s birth status as a dual citizen because of his father’s British citizenship precludes the sitting president from being “a natural born citizen.”

In response to the lawsuits, Obama’s campaign and administration have posted online images of a document purported to be the president’s COLB from the state of Hawaii.

Barack Obama’s purported, computer-generated COLB

The computer-generated document, apparently printed after 2000, is exactly the kind of document WND’s investigation has shown could have been produced from a database that had been fraudulently altered.

WND contacted the state of Hawaii to ask how its files are electronically managed, but a state official refused to answer even basic information requests and instead responded to e-mails by quoting articles from a website that routinely mocks WND’s coverage.

WND then turned to Spafford to ask if Obama’s COLB may have been compromised, but he dismissed the idea:

“His election was confirmed by Congress, and federal courts have rejected attempts to have the election invalidated, so … I think the question is moot at this point,” he said.

He added, “There seems to be investigators who have scanned a copy of a long-form birth certificate with an official seal from the state of Hawaii, and the U.S. government accepts that.”

But the scanned copy is merely a COLB. Obama’s long-form birth certificate remains among the many documents Obama has not disclosed to the public, a list that also includes his Columbia thesis, his kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, passport, medical records, files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records and any baptism records and his adoption records.

The “certification of live birth” posted online and widely touted as “Obama’s birth certificate” does not in any way prove he was born in Hawaii, since the same “short-form” document is easily obtainable for children not born in Hawaii. The true “long-form” birth certificate – which includes information such as the name of the birth hospital and attending physician – is the only document that can prove Obama was born in Hawaii, but to date he has not permitted its release for public or press scrutiny.

Oddly, though congressional hearings were held to determine whether Sen. John McCain was constitutionally eligible to be president as a “natural born citizen,” no controlling legal authority ever sought to verify Obama’s claim to a Hawaiian birth.